Over the weekend, listservs, blogs, and Twitter feeds lit up with reactions to Amy Harmon’s deep dive into the politics behind a partial ban on growing genetically modified crops on Hawaii’s main island. The fuss obscured a much more significant development that occurred with little fanfare (and no Times attention) on Friday, when the US Department of Agriculture took a giant step toward approving a controversial new crop promoted by Dow Agrosciences, that could significantly ramp up the chemical war on weeds being waged in the Midwest’s corn and soybean fields.

Keeping track of these developments is a bit like a game of Whac-a-Mole…